Eterna Therapeutics Inc. announced the appointment of Brant Binder and Richard Wagner, Ph.D. to its Board of Directors. Concurrently, Charles Cherington and Nicholas Singer have stepped down from the Board. Brant Binder is a seasoned leader and entrepreneur with more than 25 years of strategic expertise building and growing biotechnology companies.

Mr. Binder began his career in venture capital and private equity investment at Trust Company of the West. He received a B.S.F.S. in International Relations from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Richard Wagner, Ph.D., is a biotechnology entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience creating and managing drug discovery innovations.

He is an expert in the invention and industrialization of novel technologies to accelerate the discovery of small molecule and biologic therapeutic products. Dr. Wagner received a B.S. in biochemistry from Trinity College and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Brown University. Since 2007, Mr. Binder and Dr. Wagner have worked together to exploit innovations in the biotechnology field.

They recently co-founded and operate Bonito Biosciences, an oligonucleotide therapeutics company. Prior to this, they co-founded ZebiAI Therapeutics, alongside Google, to pioneer the use of machine learning in drug discovery; they sold ZebiAI to Relay Therapeutics Inc. in 2021. Earlier, they launched X-BODY Biosciences, which developed antibody and T-cell receptor domains for CAR-T applications, and was acquired by Juno Therapeutics.

Additionally, they launched X-Chem Inc., applying DNA encoded libraries of small molecules, which resulted in more than 70 drug discovery programs being licensed to pharma and biotech partners, six spin-out companies, and technology transfer of the platform into major pharma and biotech organizations. X-Chem was acquired twice, once by PPD Inc. in 2014, and later by GHO Capital in 2020. Both Mr. Binder and Dr. Wagner served in executive operating roles and on the Board of Directors of the foregoing companies.

The Board appointed each of Mr. Binder and Dr. Wagner to serve as a member of the (i) Audit Committee, (ii) Compensation Committee and (iii) Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, following which the entirety of each of the foregoing committees comprises Mr. Binder, Dr. Wagner and William Wexler, all of whom are independent under applicable SEC rules and the rules of the Nasdaq Stock Market.